Help with online galleries
May 14, 2011 3:16 PM   Subscribe

You'd think find a free looping, autoplaying flash gallery maker would be easy, wouldn't you ?

Well, you'd be wrong - i've tried simpleviewer, i've tried slideshow pro, i've tried the webgalleries in lightroom ... i've been trying for a week and can get to embedding the gallery on the site front page - I just can't get it to loop endlessly without any input from the viewer. I'd pony up for something, but sadly .... my situation would bring a tear to a glass eye at the mo. If anyone could list some helpful apps or commands to get the gallery autoplaying and looping, my soon to be homeless ass would be very grateful.
posted by sgt.serenity to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)
 
Why flash? Flash has sort of been supplanted by jQuery for simple things like this. You say nothing about how you want it to operate but here are like 25 of them. "Autoplay" is usually a simple binary switch. I've never not been able to do exactly what I want with one of these.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:00 PM on May 14, 2011


2nding DarlingBri, if you don't have a good reason for it to be flash, don't use flash. There are tons of javascript galleries based around jQuery, mooTools, and similar libraries that are a lot less hassle to work with and are more cross-platform than flash.
posted by jjb at 8:27 PM on May 14, 2011


3rding jQuery.
posted by Jairus at 9:29 PM on May 14, 2011


Response by poster: Ok, i'm not so sure of the flash anyway (you're going to lose a lot of apple eyeballs), and the jscript link is helpful - im trying to get a fluid gallery up that goes on the frontpage, doesn't have any navigation and autoplays and loops - pretty much any program that does this seems to be pay per play. I pretty much have all the content, its just getting over the hump thats a bit tricky.

I'll have a good look at the jscript link though, thanks for the info.
posted by sgt.serenity at 3:59 AM on May 15, 2011


Easy Slider. You want to turn autoscroll on (auto=true) and controlsShow=false.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:19 AM on May 15, 2011


Response by poster: Hmmm, i'm trying to install these jquery things via ftp and onsite coding but there doesnt seem to be any advice on how to do that - so i'm going trial and error (mostly error) - EASY SLIDER was almost there, the holy grail of an automatic looping gallery, but sadly i have no idea how to modify its size or make it fluid : (
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:59 AM on May 15, 2011


Stop. Everything you need is there. This works perfectly 100% of the time when implemented correctly. Start with the closest example - open 04.html from the ZIP. View the source and figure out what is going on. These pages basically ARE the instruction pages.

1. Create a folder off your root called /js and put both JS files in there.
2. Put this in your home page's head.
3. Edit this CSS block:

#slider li{
width:696px;
height:241px;
overflow:hidden;
}

...which determines the image size. 696 is the width and 241 is the height of the sample images. Change to your image sizes.

4. On your homepage, create a div called slider, and every item is a list item (li) as in the example.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:30 AM on May 15, 2011


Response by poster: Well, thanks for that - what seems to work is viewing page source and modifying the html, replacing the images with my own and changing the css file in dreamweaver - what i'm still kind of struggling with is that when it slides, there's a strange sort of border left over from the previous image or the next image - i'm also stumped at how i stop clickthrough on the images .............
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:05 AM on May 15, 2011


If you have borders than than I would suggest that either all of your images are not the same size, or you have incorrectly declared the size in the CSS.

The click-through is a totally standard a href tag around the images in the list:

(li)(a href="wherever")image(/a)(/li)

Get rid of the (a href) and (/a) and the images will no longer be linked.

If this is on a web server somewhere it can be viewed, a link would help at this point.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:15 AM on May 15, 2011


Response by poster: Yep, I went back in and made sure the images were the same size - i'll look for the href - the site is here.

btw cheers for the help!
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:57 AM on May 15, 2011


There are about 900 CSS files being included there. You seem to only actually be using one of them. To which CSS file did you add the #slider CSS?
posted by DarlingBri at 10:24 AM on May 15, 2011


PS: Is this a site for you or are you trying to execute this for a client?
posted by DarlingBri at 10:29 AM on May 15, 2011


Response by poster: i'll just go and look ............ wwwroot/css/screen.css is the one - its hosted on a webite builder site (mrsite) so you can't escape numerous css folders that you don't want which they put there anyway - it's not for a client (oh how i wish i had a client !) it's my attempt at a wedding site for someone who may or may not be me and wishes to keep anonymous and looking arty on his other site, while hopefully being able to pay the backrent.
posted by sgt.serenity at 11:07 AM on May 15, 2011


Best answer: I'm sending you a new ZIP file with a properly coded navigation, embeded slide show and single CSS file. Check your memail. If you can't properly host things on whatever monstrosity of a hosting... arrangement... that is, memail me back and we'll throw you on our server or something.

Metafilter would prefer you neither starve nor be homeless.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:27 AM on May 15, 2011


Response by poster: thanks for that, much appreciated - i'm still having trouble integrating into the mrsite 'framework' -it deletes text and so on ......
posted by sgt.serenity at 11:35 AM on May 16, 2011


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